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April 05, 2007

more on Canadian cellphone data charges

I had a question from the US asking why I didn't just get an unlimited cellphone (Internet) data plan for about $30. The answer is, there are basically no unlimited cell data plans in Canada. With Rogers, you can maybe get 25MB/month for $90. Information Echo has done a very good job of looking at the ridiculously complex and exceedingly expensive data plan options from Canadian carriers:

mobile data here in Canada is simply unrealistically priced, and until the carriers clue in to this fact and providing pricing more along the lines of what is available in the USA, it will continue to stifle their own [growth]

As a side note, I got a message on my phone yesterday that my $5/month "navigate mobile Internet" amount of data included (before the 3 cent per kilobyte charge kicks in) was being increased from 2MB/month to 5MB/month. I don't know if this is universal for the plan - the Rogers websitestill shows a 2MB limit.

# Get the Vision Mobile Internet Plan for ONLY $5 more than your regular voice plan (discounted from the $10 regular price), and receive 10MB† of data for high speed mobile Internet browsing, email access and chat

Good luck trying to decode the literally hundreds of different Rogers phone plan options, including trying to find any details on the "Rogers Vision" plans, which don't seem to exist. Rogers Vision data plan options that it gave me were:

navigate mobile Internet $5/month

1.5MB data access $15

3MB of data $25

7MB of data $40

25MB $60

100MB Data Access $100/month

If that seems confusing, contradictory, and more obscure and indecipherable than cuneiform on broken Sumerian clay tablets, that's because it is. I have to imagine Rogers has some supercomputer at their main office just to solve the math of the different plan options each month.